FKA Twigs says she’s been held to “double standards” following the U.Okay.’s choice to ban her 2023 Calvin Klein marketing campaign.
The advert in query featured the British singer-songwriter partially nude, along with her breasts hid by a button-down shirt that hung off of her proper shoulder. It was taken by photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and accompanied with the slogan, “Calvins or nothing.”
Even although FKA Twigs’ marketing campaign debuted practically a yr in the past, the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) prohibited it from ever being proven once more this week, arguing that it had inappropriately sexualized its topic.
“The ad used nudity and centered on FKA twigs’ physical features rather than the clothing, to the extent that it presented her as a stereotypical sexual object,” the ASA’s assertion learn, per The Guardian. The assertion went on to explain the {photograph} as “irresponsible and likely to cause serious offense,” primarily as a result of it “placed viewers’ focus on the model’s body rather than on the clothing being advertised.”
Interestingly, the ASA acknowledged additionally receiving complaints a couple of related Calvin Klein advert that includes Kendall Jenner, however deemed that it was inside the bounds of acceptable lingerie promoting.
FKA Twigs blasted the choice with a prolonged assertion on Instagram.
“i do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labelled me,” she wrote early Thursday. “i see a beautiful strong woman of colour whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.”
Representatives for Calvin Klein defended each FKA Twigs and Jenner’s images, saying in a press release: “The images were not vulgar and were of two confident and empowered women who had chosen to identify with the Calvin Klein brand, and the ads contained a progressive and enlightened message.”
The timing of the ban has raised a fair proportion of eyebrows, and for good motive. Last week, Calvin Klein unveiled a much-buzzed-about photograph and video marketing campaign starring Jeremy Allen White. Much of the steamy imagery ― which, by the way, had been additionally taken by Alas and Piggott ― options the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning star of “The Bear” posing on a New York rooftop in only a pair of briefs.
Though FKA Twigs didn’t point out Jenner or White by identify in her response, she nonetheless mentioned the banning of her advert was indicative of “some double standards” upon “reviewing other campaigns past and current of this nature.”
“i am proud of my physicality and hold the art i create with my vessel to the standards of women like josephine baker, eartha kitt and grace jones who broke down barriers of what it looks like to be empowered and harness a unique embodied sensuality,” she wrote.
After thanking Calvin Klein, Alas and Piggott for giving her “a space to express myself exactly who i wanted to,” she added: “i will not have my narrative changed.”
